Steve Dodd - Acting Career - Later Career

Later Career

Dodd contributed to several films in which issues facing Indigenous Australians, such as land rights and race relations, were the central subjects. These appearances included Bitter Springs (mentioned above) and The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1978), the first of two films in which he appeared alongside Jack Thompson. Dodd played the character of Tabidgi, the uncle of the lead character, Aboriginal man Jimmie Blacksmith. In the film, Jimmie Blacksmith marries a white woman named Gilda Marshall (played by Angela Punch McGregor). When they have a baby, Dodd's character, "a tribal elder, ... is worried about Jimmie's marriage to a white woman and has brought him a talisman to keep him safe". Pauline Kael, writing in The New Yorker, described the performances of the two black professional actors (Jack Charles and Dodd) as "wonderful as sots: ... Steve Dodds, who is tried for murder and simply says, 'You'd think it would take a good while to make up your mind to kill someone and then to kill them, but take my word for it, it only takes a second'".

Dodd's career was busiest in the 1980s, and by 1985 it was reported that he had acted in 55 movies or television features. In 1981 he played Billy Snakeskin in the film Gallipoli, about the fate of young men who participated in the World War I Gallipoli Campaign of 1915. This was followed by parts in Chase Through the Night and Essington, both in 1984. In 1985 he played the role of Mr Joe in The Coca-Cola Kid, an Australian romantic comedy with an international cast including Eric Roberts and Greta Scacchi. In 1986 he appeared in the film Short Changed, while through the mid-1980s he had minor parts in the popular television series The Flying Doctors (1985–1988).

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith was not the only film in which Dodd appeared that addressed topical Indigenous issues of the day. A decade after Jimmie Blacksmith, Dodd performed in Ground Zero, again with Jack Thompson in one of the lead roles. This film is a thriller based on claims that Indigenous Australians were used as human guinea pigs in the British nuclear tests at Maralinga. The film uses as its context the McClelland Royal Commission, which was investigating radioactive contamination at the site. In the film, Dodd plays a minor character named Freddy Tjapaljarri.

Sources differ on whether Dodd had a part in Evil Angels (released as A Cry in the Dark outside of Australia and New Zealand), the 1988 film about the Azaria Chamberlain disappearance, with Dodd's name not included in the cast list published by Australian Film 1978–1994, but appearing in the longer cast listing provided by IMDb. In 1988 he also played a minor role in Kadaicha, an unreleased horror film about a series of unexplained murders. In 1990 Dodd appeared in two films: Quigley Down Under, a western made in Australia but starring American Tom Selleck and Briton Alan Rickman; and The Crossing, an Australian drama set in a country town.

Dodd's career returned to politically contentious Indigenous issues when he played a minor role, of Kummengu, in the 1991 film Deadly. This film is a police drama based around the death of an Indigenous man in police custody. As in Ground Zero, the subject was very topical: the movie was released at the same time as the report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, which had for four years been examining why so many Indigenous Australians died in police detention.

In 1999, Dodd was one of three actors in Wind, a short film portraying the pursuit of an old Aboriginal man (Dodd) by a young black tracker and a white police sergeant. That same year was marked by the most commercially successful film of his career, The Matrix. Later, Dodd played minor roles in an episode of television series The Alice (2006) and the movies My Country (2007) and Broken Sun (2008); by this time his career in film and television had lasted for over sixty years.